Jon DeckerI can’t be the only one who has noticed how absurd U.S. politics has become. It’s an embarrassment, really. And while I find myself increasingly desensitized to it — and less susceptible to being surprised by anything ridiculous a politician does — I must concede it still finds its way to shock me. Last week’s announcement that Biden’s Federal Trade Commission is suing to block a merger between the grocery store chains Kroger and Albertsons was one such occurrence.
The ignorance of the FTC’s decision to block this grocery store merger is astonishing. The FTC, which purportedly exists to protect consumers, alleges it is “anti-competitive” and monopolistic to allow Kroger and Albertsons to merge, even though, in doing so, the combined entity would still remain smaller than its most significant competitor Walmart.
Kroger currently has a market cap of around $35 billion. Albertsons has a market cap of $12.5 billion. Walmart has a market cap of $480 billion. How anyone could deduce that allowing two smaller players in the grocery space to team up against a larger rival constitutes something anti-competitive is beyond me. And that’s to say nothing of the ample competition all three of these stores face from Costco, Amazon’s Whole Foods, Aldi, and so many other grocery chains.
Far from protecting consumers, the FTC is only — in the short term — protecting Walmart’s market share. In the long run, all three of these stores suffer from the absence of competition forced upon them by the FTC.
And it gets so much worse. The FTC’s alleged (more on this in a moment) rationale for blocking the merger is that it believes it will cause grocery prices to rise. This fails any basic test of common sense. If Walmart is the dominant player in the grocery arena, why would prices rise when it is suddenly faced with a more robust competitor? The pressure on Walmart to lower its prices would suddenly increase dramatically. On top of that, the increased productivity from Kroger and Albertsons implementing the comparative advantages in their respective supply chains would inevitably yield cost savings and lower prices. They have even said as much.
And now back to that word — alleged. This has to be the moment the Biden FTC has officially jumped the shark. The anti-trust case here isn’t so much as weak as it is nonexistent. One cannot even take seriously that FTC Chair Lina Khan and her staff actually believe it.
Sorry to impugn motives — but it strikes this author as far more likely the bureaucrats at the FTC are wasting taxpayer resources to block this merger simply because they believe it will benefit their future political careers. We all have to suffer because a few socialists in government want to burnish their reputations as “tough cops” against American businesses.
It’s disgraceful. And yet, it still gets worse.
Because on the heels of this announcement, allegedly conservative Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio came out and said that Khan is “the best person in my view within the Biden administration.” Yes, a Republican senator, who claims to stand for limited government, supports the Biden administration’s efforts to target and harass any business it deems “big.”
And therein lies the total absurdity of everything politics these days. The Biden FTC has gone completely rogue as a federal agency — and Republicans are all too happy to support it while it tramples over our rights.
With friends like these, who needs enemies.
Jon Decker is a senior fellow at the Parkview Institute.
There’s an election coming. Nothing will change if we don’t make it so.
Yes, blocking this potential merger would benefit the truly galactic-sized Wally’s World of Horrors (as my hubby & I call it, and shop there only for the very few things we can’t get elsewhere even here in rural Wyoming), and their shareholders and “stakeholders” in that company, and the many (mostly foreign, like Chinese) companies that supply (Chinese) goods to them and produce (many South American and Mexican) and meat (who knows, as country of origin labelling is no longer required).
Yes, if this mergers goes through, prices for consumers may go down. May – not guaranteed. But, at what real cost??? By allowing bigs to get bigger, this hurts in many ways that outweigh any potential lowering of prices. Like helping ensure that manufacturing and farming jobs will not come back to America, or under American-owned companies.
No, I do not consider Wally’s and many other companies to be American-owned – because they do not hold to American values, or work to keep (or grow) jobs in America. They have their own set of “values”, and they actively work against America and Americans. Therefore, these companies are not American in any way except they were spawned here and perhaps still have their headquarters here. But, in every way that truly counts, they are anti-American.
However, the FTC should go after Wally’s, too!!! But, will that really happen??? Doubtful, as the Bribem Regime is bought & paid for by China. And, Wally’s World could not exist if they didn’t get the bulk of their goods from China. They are in bed together.
You are who you sleep with.
Since when do we lessen competition in an effort to thwart another company? If anything, the merger will invite Walmart to open more grocery outlets in vacant Safeway stores.
They should be allowed to merge because they’d still be a lot smaller than Walmart? Everybody’s smaller than Walmart. I Don’t know how dominant Walmart is in the grocery business around the country, but it has virtually no effect in Phoenix where the merger of Safeway and Kroger would leave us with Kroger having a monopoly in many areas here.
There are 10 Walmart stores in Phoenix and 50 in within 25 miles of Phoenix. How dominant is Walmart? The article shows the market cap of Walmart is 10 times the size of Safeway & Kroger combined.
Well…. At least Biden’s consistent. He screwed up the economy-and now he’s going for Capitalism.
the current US government is a raging voracious monster out to micro manage all our lives “for our own good”. Or something.
in the bigger picture it is all about control. This why the want the Bill of Rights gotten rid of. If Biden or a substitute gets elected they will wreck the Supreme Court allowing them to run roughshod over the Constitution. The oligarchs want Middle Ages V2.0 with us as serfs and them as autocratic royalty.
My estimate is that 10-15 percent of the Republicans in Congress are RINO’S, which means their vote on any bill is sold to the highest bidder. Lobbyist have unlimited amounts of money to bribe any member of Congress. These RINO’s get rich from selling their votes to advance the Lefts agenda, and could care less in advancing legislation that would benefit their constituents.
Your estimates are as good as anyone’s. One wonders if it isn’t possible that all elected officials are not bought and sold?